every time ibenzi – entangled within a web of confused thoughts – ponders over innovation, (s)he makes it clear that innovation is merely a new way of doing something, which should accrue value for the producer or consumer and maybe even for chimps. this tickles ibenzi a bit. so as his/her thoughts begin to stray far from reality – eroding his/her share of intelligence or whatever is left of it- ibenzi starts to think about innovation tools.
but what is a tool, ibenzi asks. and the Cambridge online dictionary responds “a tool is something that helps you to do a particular activity” – by the way, this is one decent answer you get from Cambridge, if you wanna know about the rest, just look it up there.
imitation helps you to innovate. unlike chimps that learn through observation and limit behavior to what’s been cultured (e.g. boesch 1993), through imitation, companies can transit further into the creation of something new (woojea et al. 2004). 
(woojea et al. (2004) identify four stages involved in this, of which two of them seem central as back up for ibenzi’s view: first, external learning, which denotes support from the outside such as product or process based technology, e.g. when you see a technology, copy it and bring it into the company. and second, internal learning and generation, that is, producing new knowledge from what has been gained externally, and generating the technology to improve its capabilities (woojea et al. 2004).
the other two stages include dependent external performance and independent external performance. unfortunately, woojea et al. (2004) do not appear to precisely explain what those two mean (and ibenzi wishfully hopes that they track citations, and they will land on this blog to provide more insights).
with that said, it seems ok not to feel bad about copying someone, and improving what he/she does better. because imitation can be a tool for innovation.
“There is only one thing to do with a person as impossible as she” Jane Austen’s Emma.
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